This is more medical good
news. The medical profession when
confronted with pains of the chest or post operative issues is always juggling
with a clot risk which is always dangerous except the intervention of using thinners
may be just as risky.
Now we have a simple and safe
procedure that allows us to image the problem and possibly begin the
healing. Perhaps while they are at it
they could also identify and properly image the plaques themselves that so far
has never been imaged properly in diagnostic work.
As a recovered heart attack
victim, I for one know the real limits of current technology. It is much better but we still do not map the
problem and we need to do that. Besides,
a lack of pain receptors in side the body cavity ends up providing conflicting
information to the doctor. A great
example, prior to my own attack I was asymptomatic except for recurrent and
irresolvable heart burn. An imaging run
could well have discovered the problem.
Today we merely know ninety
percent of all men will autopsy with heart disease by age sixty.
Blood clots made visible by nanoparticles
By Ben
Coxworth
12:49 February 4, 2011
A nanoparticle-based process allows blood clots to show up on a new
type of CT scan (Image: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.)
Every year, millions of people come into emergency rooms complaining of
chest pains, yet those pains are only sometimes due to heart attacks.
Unfortunately in many of those cases, the only way to be sure of what’s going
on is to admit the patient for an overnight stay, and administer time-consuming
and costly tests. Now, however, a new procedure could reveal the presence and
location of a blood clot within hours. It’s made possible by the injection of
nanoparticles, each containing a million atoms of bismuth – a toxic heavy
metal.
The particles were developed by Dr. Dipanjan Pan, at the Washington University
School of Medicine in St.
Louis , Missouri
He used bismuth because it shows up on a spectral CT scanner, which is
itself a new type of technology. Whereas regular CT scanners only provide black
and white images, spectral scanners use the entire spectrum of the X-ray beam
to differentiate objects, and display metals (such as bismuth) in color.
Injecting a straight-up shot of toxic heavy metals into a patient’s
bloodstream would have dire consequences. To keep the nanoparticles harmless,
they were created from a compound in which bismuth atoms were attached to fatty
acid chains that won’t come apart in the body. This compound was dissolved in a
detergent, which was then combined with phospholipids – a key component of cell
membranes. Like oil droplets in vinegar, the nanoparticles proceeded to
self-assemble, with the bismuth compound at the core and a phospholipid
membrane on the outside. Trials on mice showed that the body was able to
release the bismuth from within the membrane, in a safe form.
Pan also added a molecule to the nanoparticles’ surface that is
attracted to fibrin, a protein that is found in blood clots but not elsewhere
in the vascular system. That molecule draws the particles to blood clots, where
the bismuth shows up as a color such as green or yellow on a spectral CT scan
image.
Not only could the technology be used to locate blood clots, but it
could possibly even treat their cause – ruptures in artery walls. If the
nanoparticles contained some sort of healing agent, then once they attached to
the fibrin in a blood clot, they could set about sealing any weak spots.
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